


The Winter Soldier

by In_Factorem_Verba



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bucky Barnes Feels, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person, POV Steve Rogers, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7661092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_Factorem_Verba/pseuds/In_Factorem_Verba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky are at war, but not with Nazis or Hydra and not one another. This time, there is no train speeding through the mountains. Only two best friends, one with a war raging on the inside, especially when the real war around them rears it's ugly head.<br/>~<br/>" At first you stand in front of me, that uniform just out of place, and I’m lost in this moment of you, clad in green with the skyline painted around your image. Even the sky in all its majesties doesn’t compare to the light in your eyes; the life that sits just behind those focused steely blue eyes. Really, it’s paling in comparison to you as a whole. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winter Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I browse on Tumblr tags and stumble into feels because of poetry.

At first you stand in front of me, that uniform just out of place, and I’m lost in this moment of you, clad in green with the skyline painted around your image. Even the sky in all its majesties doesn’t compare to the light in your eyes; the life that sits just behind those focused steely blue eyes. Really, it’s paling in comparison to you as a whole.

You, with your warm and bright smile, that curls at the edges, that feels like coming home, no matter that we are out in the middle of hell. You with that soft laugh that makes your eyes crinkle at the corners and makes my heart leap in my chest. You with your gentle tone, even when you’re boiling over with fury. Your hands, so strong (I’ve seen what they can do, able to fracture flesh and bone, cracking plaster and wood) yet they are never cruel against my skin.

Now it’s like time has frozen around us. That moment, the canvas you’re so carefully drawn onto is being shredded away. I’m lost in you, and like a helpless child, my feet are plastered in place. I’m unsure of how to respond to anything around me, because all I see is you and everything I never said. All the words emboldened in my mind.

Words I should have spoken are rising in my throat to choke me because now it might be too late.

It’s like tacks and molten tar filling my lungs as my failure is dawning on me, and yet I’m stuck, glued in my spot, unable to speak a word. Nothing could have trained me for this. No amount of practice or years of experience. Nothing my title could prepare me for. I guess I should have realized it could happen to us. To you.

The sound is shattering the air around us, shaking us all to the core, but no one will feel it like you. And here I stand, helpless and watching.

I can’t truly tell if I stand there for a second, or stand there for a day, and as the dust settles, my eyes are still fixed on you. But this time, there is no warmth of your smile to wrap around me like the comfort of home. No soft laugh. No gentle touch or expression. Not even a hint of a glimmer in those eyes as deep as oceans, no tease in the lilt of your voice.

No, now your voice is harsh like jagged knives, cutting through the deafening silence as the ringing dissipates from my ears. I blink away the frozen fear, drawing in a breath like it’s the first one I’ve had. The flash and sound crash back through my vision and yet the only fear is for you.

Moving to your side does nothing to make this moment disappear. Your voice is eroding as it bounces off of the distance and nothingness around us. I realize now I’m wearing the evidence of this across my face. The color speckling my cheeks in place of freckles, smeared across my uniform and in my hair. Blood painted onto my skin as a reminder of my failure to you.

You cling to me in my arms as though I can replace the air that escapes your lungs. As though the tighter you hold to me the less the pain will smother you and oh I wish that I could. I would give my all to take it away from you.

I know now it may be too late. I may never have the chance to speak the words, to offer you every beat of my heart and even if I said it now, I fear you may not hear me over the agony that’s spilling from your lips. If I knew it would heal your wounds, I would speak the words to you until my lungs were emptied and my voice a dull whisper.

 

                                            / _I love you_ /

 

It sits like shattered glass in my throat and on my tongue. The words daggering into my chest and I want to bleed them onto you. But your blood is real. It’s seeping into our clothes and the soil beneath us, and mine is nothing more than regret flowing in my veins.

I intend to say the words to you, though I fear it may be to the steely grey face of marble, etched with the letters that are meant to summarize your life rather than your calm eyes. That I may stand over the hallowed ground, the words like acid on my tongue, rolling down my cheeks in silent streams. That it will be the liquid in my veins, pumping through me to keep me alive, and remind me just what I’ve lost as I will never hold you again.

My name falls from your lips and the sound is nothing like what I’d imagined before, the break in your voice is nothing like what I’ve longed to hear. It too is sinking into my chest, the dagger settling in with the rest and I wish I’d never hear this kind of suffering laced into my name again. To never hear it spill from your lips and taint the lilt of your voice, turning it from the gentle breezes in a rolling field to this bitter howl of a ruthless and blackened storm.

I wish I knew what to do. That I possessed the ability to heal your wounds, or to take back time. If I ever knew how, I would do this all over again, but I wouldn’t take the chance of failing you. I would dislodge the shards of glass from my throat and free the words for you to hear. I would wish to write them on your skin and let them echo off of walls that hold them in.

Instead I’m stuck to pray, with you in my arms. Pleading that you are strong enough to hold onto life. Without you I have nothing left, so I hold on tight and I utter an assurance that I’ve got you, though it may be more to ease the pain of my own fear than yours.

But if you make it through, I will gather all your pieces. I will offer myself as glue to put you back together again. Though you can’t be whole physically, that’s not what I need you to be. I will act as the hand you no longer have.

Our roles will reverse and I will remain at your bedside. Just as you, who would listen to my wheezing breath and warm my numbingly chilled skin, who would quell my fevers and bandage my wounds, dabbing blood from the corners of my foolish mouth.

I will do the same for you, now that it is my hands that need to be strong and you that needs to be healed.

Even if I’m not your feeling of safety, of being wrapped in blankets or the comforting draw just before sleep. Even if I don’t ease the aching in your heart and my eyes and soul are not the ones you’d wish to drown in. I will linger at your side.

This is my promise to you. I will remain from here until the end. I will shield you from everything I can. And if you slip away, I will linger still, without my home and I will bury the words, and my heart, deep in the ground with you.

Though, if the fates allow, and I can hold together your shattered pieces, then I will speak these words to you. I will let them fall as a plea, a curse, as an exclamation. They can roll down my cheeks and twist my voice raw. And I will clutch onto hope that maybe you too have these words lingering on your tongue.

That it will flood my ears and remove the blades from my chest and you will once again be patching me up and melting away the chill on my skin. That I will hear the sound of a gentle summer’s breeze in your inflections, and light will shine in your eyes again. That I will call you my own, and myself yours.

And finally, we will both be home.


End file.
